


Christmas with the Living

by Deannie



Series: Comfort and Joy and Zombies [5]
Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, but not really, drug dealers suck, like a zombie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:45:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5398187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drug dealer with a twisted sense of humor deals the boys a blow at the most wonderful time of the year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christmas with the Living

**Author's Note:**

  * For [red_b_rackham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/gifts).



> For Bess, who asked for Clay under the influence. As a zombie :).

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Looking for electrical sparks in his eyes.”

“Fucking… _What_?!”

“Didn’t you ever watch _Christmas with the Dead_? The zombies had this tacky flash in their eyes. Like a Tesla coil. God, the effects sucked in that movie.”

“Jensen, I swear to God…”

Roque’s probably going to kill J any second now. He’s already all kinds of pissed off with what happened to Clay. I don’t know if Jake is baiting him to take his mind off the zombie elephant in the room or because he’s got a death wish, but if Roque’s knife comes out…

Well, then Cougar’s knife will come out and then they’ll all be killing each other.

Damn mess.

“I think he’ll be okay,” Cougar says quietly. “Maybe.” His words cut the tension and Roque breaks his death glare at Jensen to look down at Clay. Fucking unnatural is what that is.

I don’t know what drug Marquez had in that hypo—and he’s deader than Satan, so we probably won’t know until extraction, whenever the hell that’ll be—but I think I almost prefer the initial reaction to what’s happening now.

> J and I entered the old building just in time to see Marquez inject the shit into Clay’s arm. How that little weasel got away from us and overpowered him, I don’t know, but there the Colonel was, tied to a chair and fit to spit nails. Even once the drug went in, he was still growling threats.
> 
> “You better hope this stuff kills me quick, Marquez,” he gritted, pulling so hard against his restraints that his wrists were bleeding. “Because if it doesn’t, I’m going to take you apart.”
> 
> “I think you’ll have other things to worry about,” Marquez sneered. And then he leveled a pistol at my head and Jake blew a hole in his arm.
> 
> “What did you give him?” I demanded, moving forward to cut the boss loose.
> 
> “You might not want to do that,” Marquez said with a pain-filled chuckle. “Unless you want to be fighting him _and_ me.”
> 
> Jake crouched down next to Marquez on the floor, cocking his gun and setting the business end against the guy’s forehead. “You should maybe explain that a little more,” he said calmly. He moved the gun to point it at Marquez’s dick and his voice stayed quiet and deadly. “See, our colonel there has strict orders. We’re supposed to say no to drugs.” Man, sometimes that dude’s almost as scary as Roque.
> 
> The scarier thing was that Marquez couldn’t have cared less. Might’ve been dickless, I don’t know. “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, almost gleefully.
> 
> Soon enough came right fucking then, when I cut Clay’s second arm loose and he jumped up and slammed me to the ground and tried to rip my throat out.

It’s fifteen hours later, and now all he’s doing is staring into space as the clock hits midnight. It’s freaky as hell. I’ve seen Clay stupid-ass drunk, seen him beaten all to hell... I’ve even seen him drugged before, but I’ve never seen him just slack-jawed _gone_.

Of course, I’ve never had him try to rip my head off before, either. In the literal sense.

Jake pulled him off me before he could do any real damage, but of course, that let Marquez take off, and Cougar planted a bullet between the bastard’s eyes as he exited the building. We tied Clay back up and hoped we could just wait it out, watching him growl and snarl and look at us like we were meat instead of friends. Round about hour thirteen, he started to slow down, and now he’s so damn out of it that Cougar’s been able untie him long enough to wrap his wrists, which he’s torn to fuck trying to get at us.

“He’s breathing slower,” Cougar tells us. “But not too slow.”

J runs a hand through his hair to spike it up a little more. I swear it makes him think better. “So maybe he’ll come out of it soon?” He looks at Cougar, a little more pleading in his eyes than I think he means to show. “Right? I mean, what’re we going to do with him if he doesn’t? We’re in the middle of nowhere and dark on comms. We missed our window, so nobody’s coming for us for another two days and the extraction point is three miles from here.”

“So we stay right the fuck here and wait until he’s well enough to move,” Roque grunts. “The fuck do you think we do?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, Roque, maybe get him some fucking help?” J is a reckless son of a bitch sometimes, and I hold my breath to see whether Roque’s gonna draw on him or not.

But he doesn’t. He looks at Clay and just deflates and takes a deep, cold breath. “Who the hell would we take him to, Jensen?” he asks finally, tired and worried even though he clearly doesn’t want to be either. “Marquez and his dealers own every town around here. He may be dead, but his organization isn’t.”

“What about Santa Lucia?” J asks, grasping at straws. “One of us can run there and get a doctor or… something.” He looks at Clay, and I can tell he’s as scared as I am that the Colonel ain’t waking up from this one.

“No one will answer the door to you,” Cougar reminds him. “A gringo knocking on your door on Nochebuena?”

Roque laughs. “I almost forgot. Christmas Eve.” He picks up a beaker from the lab setup on the table and flings it across the room where it explodes on impact. He turns back around and points at Clay. “Why not, right? Ain’t had a Christmas go right since I met that asshole.”

He has a point. Two years ago, we were stuck in a firefight in Ghana for half of Christmas Day. Cougar nearly got his head taken off. The year before that, we were in Chile. Bar fight, I think. Whatever. All I got for Christmas that year was eighteen stitches and a bitchy call from Jolene.

“What about last year?” I ask. “We weren’t even deployed then.” Thank God. Jolene and me had a quiet Christmas. Well, quiet if you didn’t have the room next to ours. I think Cougar had a girl then, too. Jake spent it with his niece…

Roque sits down, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “He got the two of us arrested in Reno.”

J leans against one of the tables. “No shit? For what?”

Roque chuckles. “Indecent exposure.”

I try to hold in the laughter, but after fifteen hours of this shit, I need the release. So do the others and the room rings with it for a minute or two before we all realize it sounds like we’re having a fucking wake for the guy.

“Wish his eye would twitch or something,” Roque mutters, back to being pissed off. “Some damn sign he’s still in there.”

If this was a movie, he’d twitch. Wish to God I was on the big screen.

“What if we sing Jingle Bells,” J suggests, staring at the boss like he’s thinking the same thing I am.

“The Colonel hates Jingle Bells,” Cougar points out.

“Exactly,” J replies. “Piss him off enough, he’ll have to wake up, right?”

“Piss _me_ off enough, I’ll have to shoot you,” Roque says bluntly.

“Man, touchy!” Jensen mutters. But thank God, he doesn’t sing.

“All right, we need to bed down.” Roque takes command and looks at Clay carefully. “Wish we could untie him and lay him out, but I ain’t waking up to him feasting on my guts.” He looks up at Cougar, king of the late night watch. “You’re up, Cougar. Wake Pooch at dawn. Jensen’s up at 11:00.”

“Never could sleep in on Christmas Day anyway,” Jensen says, looking around for a place to fall down. He picks a tight, protected place in the corner, like always, and he’s out the second his head hits the pack he’s using as a pillow. Roque lies down next to Clay’s chair like a guard dog, but he’s asleep just as quick.

Damn it, Clay. Why’re you doing this, man? He’s not even blinking now, and I’d close his eyes, but that’s too fucking much like…

“Sleep,” Cougar tells me. “I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

I shake my head. “Yeah. Merry fucking Christmas, right?”

Cougar just grins sadly and hefts his gun. “Feliz Navidad.”

*******

Cougar doesn’t wake me. Clay does, with a kick to the head.

“Pooch, what the fuck am I doing tied to this chair?”

The sound of his voice, sane and angry and rough as hell, is enough to have me standing in front of him, Cougar running over from the door, and Jensen and Roque sitting straight up in surprise.

“You found another way to ruin my Christmas, you asshole,” Roque tells him.

Clay may be blinking and talking, but I’m not convinced he’s tracking quite yet. “What?”

Roque chuckles. “Never mind.” He gives Clay a long look. “You with us now?”

“Yes,” Clay replies, gazing around at the rest of us like we’re the ones who went nuts.

“No urge to eat our brains?” J asks blithely, stretching like a cat as he stands and comes over. Shit just bounces off that kid.

Clay processes that for a minute and shakes his head. “What the hell are you talking about, Captain?”

“Nothing, sir,” Jake assures him. “Just thinking about Christmas dinner.”

“Thanking our lucky stars your goose wasn’t cooked,” Roque adds.

Clay has a frown on his face like he figures they’re just messing with him now. Which they are. He raises clear, drug-free eyes to me. “You want to tell me what happened?” He shakes his head and turns a little green. “Forget that. It’s Christmas, I don’t want to know. Just start by untying me and we’ll go from there.”

We don’t go far—Clay falls on his face the moment he tries to stand up—but we’re all whole. Together. Alive.

Fuck, man, it’s Christmas, right? This one started off bad, but I’ve had worse. And with much worse company.

“Who’s for hunting through Marquez’s shit for his whiskey stash?” Roque asks as he peels Clay off the floor and deposits him back on the chair.

“As long as we don’t find any other zombies tied up in the cellar or something,” J puts in as he and Cougar head for the back room to root around.

“Jensen,” Roque growls, not moving from his place at Clay’s side. “I swear, one of these days, I’m gonna put you out of our misery.”

“But not today!” Jensen crows, standing in the doorway of the back office, brandishing a bottle of Johnny Walker. “Because _I_ have the booze.”

“Damn lucky you do.”

Yeah. Damn lucky all around.

Gonna be a Merry friggin Christmas, after all.

*******  
the end

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of (hopefully) 24 ficlets (500 word minimum) featuring zombies, with or without winter holiday references (Hannukah, Kwanza, etc, gratefully accepted as possibilities). If you want to suggest a ficlet prompt, check this entry of mine: http://deannie.dreamwidth.org/11597.html or leave a comment on any fic in the series. (Obviously, that offer only extends until December 24th, 2015, and I reserve the right to have life intervene.


End file.
